Random Thoughts from a Confused Mind

This blog will be a set of stray thoughts that I might have had or will make up otherwise ...

Friday, February 10, 2006

There she stands ... with a heart so cold!

Sorry for the fairly long absence. In the limited time that I spent at home over the past one week, I had the choice of either reading blogs or writing them, and chose to do the former. RIght now, I'm trying hard to decide between the three different topics I want to write abt and can't make up my mind. Lesse! Hmmmmmm! Ok - mannequins win.

So it all started last week when I went shopping and had my attention drawn towards some of the mannequins on display. Boy! When did they become this pretty. I almost proposed to one of them. Silky hair; perfect feature and what more - totally believable - there she stood - urging me to buy a short skimpy top for $60. "You gold digger!" I said to myself and walked away and that's when the rest of the stuff in this post started playing in my mind.

When did people start concentrating so heavily in making mannequins. When I was young(er) (now come on! it wasn't that long ago; just rewind your minds by a decade), all mannequins looked the same. I remember this wig shop in Kolkata that had two unisex mannequins. Yes, you read it right - Unisex mannequins!! The only thing differentiating them were the wigs they sported. Occasionally the shopkeeper would draw a pencil thin moustache on one of them to make it look more manly but soon the moustache would disappear - or even worse - we would see a mustached mannequin with a girl's hairdo. I remember that several shops didn't even go through the rigor of getting a mannequin. They would just stuff clothes with newspaper and put it on the window or have one of those "blowup doll thingies".

But those days are gone. Girlfriends now not only prevent their knight in shining armours from looking at other princesseses. Mannequins are as much of a threat to them as that next Jolie look alike. The boyfriend looks at a dress on a mannequin and wonders "Whoa! What a hottie." Soon the girl friend puts on that same dress and you see that all's not well in wonderland. The same thing holds true for us men. Have you seen the abs they give to the male mannequins. I vaguely remember trying to count the number of stripes on a male mannequins stomach and giving up after ten. And it's not just the shape. Shopkeepers now have multi-ethnic mannequins. They have "happy family mannequins" (where an entire family of varying age groups are shown). They have mannequins that have robotic limbs that occasionally move. It's not long before mannequins are full blown robots that'll escort you into shops, help you shop and if need be strip down to bare essentials to send you home better clad.

There's so much writing abt the changes around us - computers, cars, music systems and what not! Somebody ought to mention these glaring changes in mannequin technology. So I thought I would. Peace!

// posted by Sagnik Nandy @ 10:37 PM

Comments:

Sagnik da,

I think that thou hast been of late not noticing the (huge) leaps and bounds that Kolkata malls have taken in mannequin technology...

There are actually "happy family" mannequins in Kolkata Shopper's Stop and Gariahat Mall (yeah!! there is a Gariahat Mall!!) I feel strange sometimes looking at these strange creations of man...

However, there was one time, when me and Debalina had witnessed a female mannequin being transported across a floor of a popular shopping arcade in Kol... the guy holding the midriff was looking extremely uncomfy, what with his hand straying might cause a few unapproving glances in the middle of a crowded mall!!!

hey, mone ache, the doordarshan type manequins? the ones that had eighties style plastic swept up hair, wierdly wearing saree and doing a nomoshkar? i always thot theid start by saying " bishesh bishesh khobor holo" and read the news. and amazingly inspiet of the pantaloons westside thing going, they still exist in good ol gariahat.

No doubt about it, many of the most beautiful babes on the planet are mannequins. I was in a relationship with one until I discovered toe-sucking with a live woman was more fun. Now this bastard gorilla wants to stop me enjoying even this simple pleasure.

sagnik, excellent topic, which I feel could have been explored a lot further. As i read the previous comment here: 'thou shalt not lust after plastic', it was hard not to wonder how different the average real female is than plastic :D One might even argue that the 'plasticization' of real female goes hand in hand with the development of mannequin technology...as people developing (and applying) both the technologies end up, for the sake of simplicity, reusing the same models of beauty.

well i think you are an ex student of james ... well i too am in the threshold of leaving this home... by daway really nice blog its true the TV is no longer as it was. altaf's songd though tuneless had a charm to it that is no longer found

The darker and smoother ones also have an aura of mystery and enigma about them, as if they have a story to tell. I love to dwell on the guys, even if for a split second. They have such lovely squarish jaws and wavy hair, like those strong and silent types in Mills & Boon :-)